Bug allowed free access to Sirius radio service

anyone see this article which came out today 11/24/08? I wonder how many people have been listening illegally or how many people never had their service shutdown after they cancelled their subscription?

phantom subscribers...

This link in goggle forums talks about people getting the service for months after stopping payment. In my career as Info Security Tech I've noticed that many companies often have a hard time (or little motivation in) detecting cancellations in their once valid subscription based services, so Sirius XM isn't alone in this boat.

It be nice if they worked harder at such things though, maybe just continue non-paying users with commercials, instead of shutting them off.

The bug reported a few days ago through TippingPoint, appears to me to be about exploiting a hole that allowed for completely pirated radios, not people who stopped paying and just kept getting the service. I'm guessing the "cancelled the credit card" crowd is a much bigger problem then pirates.

I don't think this is a real issue anymore and it was probably only exploited by a very small group of people or stumbled across purely by accident. Now that Sirius and XM have merged technologies I believe it will be significantly tougher to "pirate" sat rad.

I mean, it's not like we spend that much for a subscription considering the massive music library and cool receivers AND internet radio to boot!